Basic income

i don't understand how restricted capital mobility is going to bring good middle class jobs back to the white working class

also it's important to remember that Trump will lose

the point I took from it is that even if we had any options to legislate UBI into existence it doesn't solve for having literally nothing to do all day

im hella in favor of guaranteed public jobs programs

ppl can still have jobs if they want with basic income, or just live in a yurt <<< smart ppl

but what abt when ppl want a sick job, having copious yurt experience is not going to look good meanwhile "i buried and dug up gold for the us govt" is gonna be like wow u have some great experience with the shiny metal gold u r hired

the yurt economy is gonna be huge

more like the hurt economy is gonna be yuge because ppl wont have meaningful work opportunities

the butthurt belt

i mean in all seriousness basic income "solves for having something to do all day" much better than out current system or a guaranteed work scenario cause it allows greater flexibility, u cn do things that dont pay or things that dont pay that much or work on things that will give u the experience for yr career or just play video games in a yurt, rather than working in an amazon warehouse or doing deadend government ditch digging

i think we shd have both honestly

yeah not everyone is cut out for twitch streaming from inside the hurt yurt. some people want to sign up for that government jobs program, so they can look down on those other people, living off the government

guaranteed work just seems like the bad socialism to me

hmm *tents fingers*

it seems like one of those things that could demonstrate the value of the "laboratories of democracy" bullshit about state sovereignty, like, new hampshire could do guaranteed work and vermont could do straight UBI, and see how people feel after a few years

actually probably need it a lot more in Louisiana and Mississippi but you know

One of the intended outcomes of a UBI would be to encourage people to exit the labor force. People who don't feel good when they aren't working will likely be able to take some jobs vacated by people who adopt the yurt lifestyle. But like one of the talking points in Inventing the Future is that diminishment of the (Protestant) work ethic is important to the goal of emancipating people from toil.

In previous basic income experiments, some people did quit working, and that's a desirable outcome imo. "Dignified jobs" is a policy goal that presupposes working is necessary for a dignified life, and I really don't think it is.

we could always socialize the commons -- oil, etc. -- like they do in northern europe to provide the basic income thomas paine advocated centuries back but you know freedom and jesus and all that. we also wouldn't want to trouble the comfortable positions of the winners

yes duh I mean my MAIN argument for UBI has always been that there are a lot of people working who would be better off not - for the rest of us who have to try and work with (around) them

politically and realistically though the so-called protestant work ethic (because you know those jews and catholics are just lazy) has been part of the bedrock national identity even back to colonial times so yes, GLWT, that's why any approach to achieving something like a UBI needs to be tempered with jobs programs and EITC expansion

political feasibility is so far from necessary to speculate about

on reflection it is kind of funny how I go on the AI threads to just shit all over "if it has a nonzero chance of happening then we have to consider seriously worrying about it" and come on this thread to be like "guys UBI how do we get there it could happen"

imo ubi has a much grater chance of happening than sentient computing but nether of them r prob happening anytime soon, from a practical perspective how u lay the groundwork for it to be a reality in 20 or 50 years is start to build the institutions of activism academia and so forth and i think at that stage preemptively negotiating with the system youre trying to change is counter productive and prob fatal

the point I took from it is that even if we had any options to legislate UBI into existence it doesn't solve for having literally nothing to do all day

― El Tomboto, Saturday, March 19, 2016 3:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what you do on a daily basis should be your call. it is up to each person to find meaning in their lives. purpose should not be reliant on having a job or not.

people would still create, they would still consume, they would fall in love, they would play, etc. "having literally nothing to do all day" is an capitalist-apocalyptic strawman.

also kinda interesting how ppl looove complexity

imo ubi has a much grater chance of happening than sentient computing but nether of them r prob happening anytime soon, from a practical perspective how u lay the groundwork for it to be a reality in 20 or 50 years is start to build the institutions of activism academia and so forth and i think at that stage preemptively negotiating with the system youre trying to change is counter productive and prob fatal

― lag∞n, Saturday, March 19, 2016 4:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's actually a bright side to it prob not happening for a long time which is the longer you wait the richer we get and if you hold the poverty line fixed that means it gets cheaper and cheaper to provide a UBI. even though you can make a case for UBI now, it gets easier and easier to do so as time and economic growth progresses

Don't see anyone currently considering it but i would like to see a country go full Left-Libertarian, just have the state provide public goods and a UBI, that's it. cause knkow that we can afford a generous UBI at current rates of taxation and income per capita if you swap out all cash and in-kind transfers. like in Canada for example the total value of transfers is about 15-20k per capita. but that includes everything: health care, education, pension, disability, EI. not saying i would vote for it but i'd like one country to do it just to see what happens

cause *we* know that we can afford a generous UBI

also kinda interesting how ppl looove complexity

― lag∞n, Saturday, March 19, 2016 4:48 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk if people like complexity and intentionally design complex transfer systems or if those insanely complex welfare systems you read about just kind of slowly grew over time because it's hard to remove them once they're in or something like that? it would be interesting to read about their history. but like, i don't think that LBJ or someone was like, ok so we're gonna have 126 different programs

"having literally nothing to do all day" is an capitalist-apocalyptic strawman

When the society around you sees productive work as self-actualization and you've been raised your whole life to become a "productive member of" then having literally nothing to do all day is a very real problem for people's wellness. The key part of your statement, though, is that people would still consume, and hopefully that would feed back into jobs for themselves and others (back to the whole "stimulus package would have been more successful as a series of household helicopter drops"). Acting like people are all going to just abandon literally everything they've been taught about the meaning of work because they no longer have to take a job they might hate is just as much of a strawman.

readjust income to 'actual' as opposed to 'inherited' productivity and our UBI would prolly be super-generous. americans are the hardest working suckers in the world, after all

bureaucrats don't love complexity, at all. It arises from poor communications and personalities and all the other reasons people do stupid stuff, and then it becomes entrenched. But with sufficient political will and a remarkably small amount of effort lots of complexity can be simplified in a remarkably short amount of time - just takes somebody noticing and giving a shit at the right level (i.e. the WH)

Acting like people are all going to just abandon literally everything they've been taught about the meaning of work because they no longer have to take a job they might hate is just as much of a strawman.

yes it totally is. has anyone said that "people are all going to just abandon literally everything they've been taught about the meaning of work"?

besides we are kind of already seeing it in the new internet economy. people being paid to play video games all day. people being paid to surf the internet. bloggers. content aggregators. many of these new economy jobs are effectively the things people would do all day without "work".

taking an app car will be so cheap too ~75% of yr current uber/lyft/et al fare goes to the driver (big chunk of that obvs vehicle maintenance/gas/etc tho)

― lag∞n, Thursday, March 17, 2016 5:08 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but... then uber have to own a whole fleet of robot cars, that just sit around when they're being unused. kind of changes their business model?

When the society around you sees productive work as self-actualization

hey if that's the only venue for self-actualization then that is society's problem. but that's okay, they will get used to it.

also i think paying a UBI out of labor income is kind of a hard sell cause it creates its own political opposition as well as making it more expensive per payer if people react to it by working less. would be cool if you could fund it through like a carbon tax or a land tax or something. like if you fund it through a carbon tax and people start burning less fossil fuels that's a win-win. and if you fund it through land tax, well people as a whole can't stop owning land the way they can reduce the amount they work, so the revenue is stable

v much in favor of land taxes

but... then uber have to own a whole fleet of robot cars, that just sit around when they're being unused. kind of changes their business model?

You've noticed the writing on the wall! Avis Budget Group, Toyota and Daimler AG are going to eat Uber alive because they actually already do massive fleet management. Basically every business that lives off of skimming drivers instead of renting fleets is toast.

also i agree with lagoon that guaranteed job is the bad kind of socialism. whereas the specifics of UBI are crystal clear aside from a few impt technical details (clawback rates, eligibility, what to tax, what to remove to make the money for it, etc) job guarantee is a huge mess of unanswered questions that almost inevitably releases the ghost of central planning from the box. how will the govt figure out what jobs to give people? how will it know how many jobs to provide? will people have a choice of which guaranteed job? how many choices? plus it just seems like something govts would bungle so bad to forever sour people's opinions of large scale utopian welfare systems

guaranteed jobs:
-- video game beta tester
-- bikini inspector (at an actual textile factory, get your mind out of the gutter)
-- play for the spurs when pop rests his starters

literally nothing to do all day is a very real problem for people's wellness

people have friends. they like to walk or go jogging. they like to play or watch sports. they like to make art. they like to read. they like to eat and maybe even cook food. they like to surf the internet. they like to watch movies or see a bad. they like to drink and do drugs. they have relationships. they go to birthday parties. none of these things require "productive work" if there is a guaranteed income. all of them are meaningful experience if you like them. every time i see "literally nothing to do all day" i just imagine people sitting in a dark room not moving.

maybe some people will do that. some people do that now! "productive work" hasn't solved depression.

psychologically you could argue it would be tremendously healthy for everyone to not be dependent on "productive work" for their self-actualization. but imo better to face yourself now and explore what you really want from life than just ignore that for 40+ years and defer meaning to the accruing of a paycheck. by making people confront themselves rather than giving them a comfortable yet shallow and ultimately meaningless "purpose" in life, maybe society as a whole would be a better, less paranoid, less narcissistic, more honest place to be.

No, I get it, you put words in my mouth so you can have someone dumber than you to argue with - not everybody has such an easy time self-actualizing

dude i quoted exactly what you said. im not trying to argue w you either, actually i agree with most of what you are saying here. i just really don't buy the "what will people do?" defense.

yes duh I mean my MAIN argument for UBI has always been that there are a lot of people working who would be better off not - for the rest of us who have to try and work with (around) them

― El Tomboto, Saturday, March 19, 2016 4:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

No, I get it, you put words in my mouth so you can have someone dumber than you to argue with - not everybody has such an easy time self-actualizing

― El Tomboto, Saturday, March 19, 2016 5:51 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

B-)

my genuine confusion here is that I am postulating that UBI probably needs to be part of a combo package that includes a certain amount of WPA type stimulus jobs and this is being taken as me saying that no we need to guarantee 100% employment because shitty jobs are what make people real, or some other indefensible nonsense. So I'm left to make the assumption that you've decided to characterize my position in the stupidest way possible because what's the fun in arguing with someone who agrees with you?

lol i agree with you 100%.

the only think i don't agree with you is that we are arguing.

so what did you mean by "literally nothing to do all day"?

I was trying to say there are some people, quite possibly a significant percentage of people, maybe even whole communities (like the former company towns being gutted by globalization, as in the article referenced) that aren't just going to suddenly be healthy happy places if UBI gets implemented. To some extent demand created by UBI cash will revitalize some things here and there, for sure, but I don't think it's helpful to assume that there are just natural entrepreneurs or undiscovered showbiz talents lying all over the country just wishing they had more time to work on their dreams instead of making stuff at the plant. Again, SOME people leave the workforce in UBI experiments; certainly not all, so why would we assume it's okay that in those places where almost all of the jobs are disappearing, UBI is a panacea?

I don't think it's helpful to assume that there are just natural entrepreneurs or undiscovered showbiz talents lying all over the country just wishing they had more time to work on their dreams instead of making stuff at the plant

see i strongly disagree here. i feel like this approach drastically underestimates the creative value of millions of people. for one, this is the whole reason we have the personal computer revolution in the first place. people dropped out of the standard workforce to focus on a passion project, playing with computers, which had very little practical application at the time. now they are running the world.

where by standard workforce you mean undergrad

also it's important to remember that Trump will lose

what will you give me on this?